More Possible Problems With 12V2x6 Adapter Found On 4080 SUPER

The 12VHPWR has been a source of many issues with the launch of NVIDIA’s 40 series graphics cards which with the launch of the revised 12V2x6 connection, were thought to be behind us. Well unfortunately not as this connector may also be facing some issues albeit it may just be a one off concern.

12V2x6 Not Locking In Place

With the launch of the 4080 SUPER, many reviewers, including ourselves, had hands on with the card, one of these reviewers was Igor’s Lab who made a concerning discovery with the included 12V2x6 adapter included with an undisclosed third party GPU. It was found that the adapter didn’t click into the card meaning that it wasn’t locked in place and could easily be knocked out of place despite being pushed all the way in. The video below demonstrates the issue.

So what was the problem? Well on further inspection of a functioning adapter and the new faulty adapter, Igor could see that the contact springs on the old adapter “sit much further into the housing than the almost flush contacts of the new, faulty adapter “, these differences can be seen with the naked eye. It was also seen that the side latches are completely different as well.

Igor went further to analyse the actual connector with a 300x magnification and laser drill through the surface directly down into the spring contact. With the functioning adapter the result is “a layer of tin around 1.5 µm thick lies on a layer of nickel around 2 µm thick and inside we have pure electrolytic copper.” On the faulty adapter it was discovered that the coating over the copper is far too thick, there is too much nickel on the copper and it looks as if the contacts have been galvanised twice by mistake.

In summary, this adapter isn’t seen as safe and is very poor quality. Igor emphasizes that there is no need to panic over this and to simply just take caution with your adapter and just ensure that there is a click when you push it in.

Whilst I’m not hands on with the GPU testing, the guys at the office never mentioned encountering any issues, so this could be a one off situation on a few models. Either way, quality control should be catching this before the cards released.